Good Luck Knot Spell

Find yourself some red, white, yellow/gold, blue, and green string (or ribbon, yarn, embroidery thread, whatever).
Cut them into about 10 inch pieces. Ideally, the string should wrap around your wrist or ankle plus 2-3 inches, depending on the thickness of your knotting material. So 10 inches might be too much. Try to overestimate rather than underestimate.
Hold the threads together and make a knot with all of them saying/thinking/etc. “With this knot the spell’s begun”
Make a knot in the red string. “This knot is for luck.”
Make a knot in the yellow/gold string. “This knot is for wealth and prosperity.”
Make a knot in the blue string “This knot is for protection”
Make a knot in the green string. “This knot is for growth.”
Make a knot in the white string. “This knot is for preservation.”
Knot all the threads together. “And this knot is to bring it all together and bring this lucky boon to me.”
Then tie the cord around your wrist or ankle. Or you can carry it with you.
Ideally, you should be envisioning your intent while doing the spell but I’ve done this spell drunk at a bar with zero envisioning and only white packing twine and it worked great.

Dream Work

Dream work is another relevant practice. Dreams reveal a great many “secrets” about ourselves and our thought processes. Even the most mundane dreams can possess enlightening revelations. By keeping a dream journal and working on interpreting them you may come to find some useful tidbits of information buried in your psyche.

This exercise may prove fairly difficult, especially if you have trouble remembering your dreams. If that is the case, first look into and practice ways in which to increase dream recall. Dream work can also become very intense for some; nightmares may be prevalent or implications and fragments of painful repressed memories may be unveiled.

To induce dreams specifically targeted to aid shadow work, try creating a bedtime ritual of sorts. Experiment with different herbs to combine and use for tea, light a candle programmed with your intention, evoke related spirit guides, reflect, meditate, etc. For best results, make it a highly customized ritual to be performed only when you deliberately want to induce these types of dreams, which often times may be intense and even exhausting– not something you generally want to experience every night or anytime you perform a bedtime ritual.

Spiders in Myth and Folklore

Nearly all cultures have some sort of spider mythology, and folktales about these crawly creatures abound!

Hopi (Native American): In the Hopi creation story, Spider Woman is the goddess of the earth. Together with Tawa, the sun god, she creates the first living beings. Eventually, the two of them create First Man and First Woman – Tawa conceptualizes them while Spider Woman molds them from clay.

Greece: According to Greek legend, there was once a woman named Arachne who bragged that she was the best weaver around. This didn’t sit well with Athena, who was sure her own work was better. After a contest, Athena saw that Arachne’s work was indeed of higher quality, so she angrily destroyed it. Despondent, Arachne hanged herself, but Athena stepped in and turned the rope into a cobweb, and Arachne into a spider. Now Arachne can weave her lovely tapestries forever, and her name is where we get the word arachnid.

Africa: In West Africa, the spider is portrayed as a trickster god, much like Coyote in the Native American stories. Called Anansi, he is forever stirring up mischief to get the better of other animals. In many stories, he is a god associated with creation, either of wisdom or storytelling. His tales were part of a rich oral tradition and found their way to Jamaica and the Caribbean by way of the slave trade. Today, Anansi stories still appear in Africa.
Cherokee (Native American): A popular Cherokee tale credits Grandmother Spider with bringing light to the world. According to legend, in the early times, everything was dark and no one could see at all because the sun was on the other side of the world. The animals agreed that someone must go and steal some light and bring the sun back so people could see. Possum and Buzzard both gave it a shot, but failed – and ended up with a burned tail and burned feathers, respectively. Finally, Grandmother Spider said she would try to capture the light. She made a bowl of clay, and using her eight legs, rolled it to where the sun sat, weaving a web as she traveled. Gently, she took the sun and placed it in the clay bowl, and rolled it home, following her web. She traveled from east to west, bringing light with her as she came, and brought the sun to the people.

Celtic: Sharon Sinn of Living Library Blog says that in Celtic myth, the spider was typically a beneficial creature. She explains that the spider also has ties to the spinning loom and weaving, and suggests that this indicates an older, goddess-focused connection that has not been fully explored. The goddess Arianrhod is sometimes associated with spiders, in her role as a weaver of mankind’s fate.

In several cultures, spiders are credited with saving the lives of great leaders. In the Torah, there is a story of David, who would later become King of Israel, being pursued by soldiers sent by King Saul.

David hid in a cave, and a spider crawled in and built a huge web across the entrance. When the soldiers saw the cave, they didn’t bother to search it – after all, no one could be hiding inside it if the spider web was undisturbed. A parallel story appears in the life of the prophet Mohammed, who hid in a cave when fleeing his enemies. A giant tree sprouted in front of the cave, and a spider built a web between the cave and the tree, with similar results.

Some parts of the world see the spider as a negative and malevolent being. In Taranto, Italy, during the seventeenth century, a number of people fell victim to a strange malady which became known as Tarantism, attributed to being bitten by a spider. Those afflicted were seen to dance frenetically for days at a time. It’s been suggested that this was actually a psychogenic illness, much like the fits of the accusers in the Salem Witch Trials.

Spiders in Magic
If you find a spider roaming around your home, it’s considered bad luck to kill them. From a practical standpoint, they do eat a lot of nuisance insects, so if possible, just let them be or release them outside.

Rosemary Ellen Guiley says in her Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft, and Wicca that in some traditions of folk magic, a black spider “eaten between two slices of buttered bread” will imbue a witch with great power. If you’re not interested in eating spiders, some traditions say that catching a spider and carrying it in a silk pouch around your neck will help prevent illness.

In some Neopagan traditions, the spider web itself is seen as a symbol of the Goddess and of the creation of life. Incorporate spider webs into meditation or spellwork relating to Goddess energy.

An old English folk saying reminds us that if we find a spider on our clothing, it means money is coming our way. In some variations, the spider on the clothes means simply that it’s going to be a good day. Either way, don’t disregard the message

How to Make a Witches Ladder

To make your basic witch’s ladder, you’ll need:

Yarn or cord in three different colors
Nine items that are similar in property but in different colors (nine beads, nine shells, nine buttons, etc)
Cut the yarn so that you have three different pieces in a workable length – usually a yard or so is good. Although you can use the traditional red, white and black, there’s no hard and fast rule that says you must. Tie the ends of the three pieces of yarn together in a knot.

Begin braiding the yarn together, tying the feathers or beads into the yarn, and securing each in place with a sturdy knot. Some people like to chant or count as they braid and add the feathers. If you wish, you can say something like this variation on the traditional chant:

By knot of one, the spell’s begun.
By knot of two, the magic comes true.
By knot of three, so it shall be.
By knot of four, this power is stored.
By knot of five, my will shall drive.
By knot of six, the spell I fix.
By knot of seven, the future I leaven.
By knot of eight, my will be fate.
By knot of nine, what is done is mine.

As the feathers are tied into knots, focus your intent and goal. As you tie the final and ninth knot, all your energy should be directed into the cords, the knots and the feathers. The energy is literally stored within the knots of the witch’s ladder. When you’ve completed the string and added all nine feathers or beads, you can either knot the end and hang the ladder up, or you can tie the two ends together forming a circle.

How to Start Learning Spells

Once you start practising witchcraft, you have to deal with learning spells. This can be a bit of a chore but it shouldn’t be too difficult. Some really easy spells will only have a couple of steps and few words to learn. Longer spells can be more complex and there can be long pieces of dialogue involved.

Now before we go any farther, just remember that a spell read from a book is still better than no spell at all. Don’t feel that you have to avoid doing spellwork because they seem too hard to learn. Your mental focus will be better if you can run through the spell without a book though so you should try to learn as much as possible to go from memory. But having to read the words or peek at the next step is just fine.

If you first understand why certain steps are being done, you’ll have an easier time remembering all the actions. Same with the words. Think about what they mean and what you are hoping they will accomplish for you. It’s easy to remember when there is a better understanding of the steps.

For those longer spells when you just can’t seem to get the words straight in your head, use a cue card rather than the entire book. A small slip of paper is less distracting during the spell and will still help you get through it without a mistake.

Get your supplies together ahead of time to reduce your distraction level during your spell. If you are checking ingredient lists while you’re supposed to be concentrating on something else, that’s not a good sign. All your tools, materials and supplies should be gathered and measured before you sit down to make your magick. That way you can do everything straight from the book without it impacting the outcome. 

Witching Hour

Witching hour, in folklore, the time at night when the powers of witches and other supernatural beings are believed to be strongest, usually occurring at midnight or 3:00 AM. The term also has a modern colloquial meaning that refers to a time of unpredictable or volatile activity, such as the unsettled, colicky sleep of infants or the final hours of stock trading.

The association of witches with midnight is rooted in folk beliefs that supernatural phenomena are most prevalent at certain times of the day and year. Much like seasonal events, such as the solstices and equinoxes, midnight was deemed to evoke magic, allowing for unpredictable and possibly malevolent happenings. It is said that during the witching hour the boundary between the living and the dead becomes blurred and the living are more sensitive to the spirits of the dead. Witches, sorcerers, and fairies were among the spirits and figures believed to have stronger powers during these times and to carry out their mischief or dark practices at night.

Some beliefs set the witching hour’s boundaries between 12:00 AM and 3:00 AM or between 3:00 AM and 4:00 AM. Biblical references to the death of Jesus were calculated as having occurred at 3:00 PM. Accepting this calculation, the inversion or opposite of this time was then considered the “devil’s hour.”

In literature and folklore
In literature one of the earliest references to the witching hour appears in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in which Prince Hamlet begins one of his soliloquies:

’Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.…

Although this soliloquy, which was written between 1599 and 1601, mentions “the very witching time of night,” one of the first recorded uses of the term witching hour appears in the poem “Nightmare” by Elizabeth Carolina Keene, from her collection Miscellaneous Poems, published in 1762. In modern times American author Anne Rice published The Witching Hour in 1990, the first novel in a best-selling trilogy about a family of witches living in New Orleans.

The folklore of many cultures offers advice on how to ward off supernatural powers or harness them to one’s advantage, with specific instructions on what to do at the stroke of midnight. In the folk beliefs of Nordic (Scandinavian) cultures, for example, an unmarried woman could see the face of her future spouse by peering into a well at midnight on Midsummer’s Eve. According to 19th-century Irish poet and folklorist Lady Jane Wilde, a number of Irish love charms and rituals against harm involved tonics taken at midnight or visits to graveyards or churches at that particular time.

In modern times the term witching hour has become an colloquialism for other periods of unpredictable or troublesome activity. Parents may use it to describe the fussy period in infancy when a baby tends to cry continuously, usually during the same time each day and at night. In investing, the witching hour is the last hour of trading before stock options, futures, and indexes expire, which occurs on the third Friday of each month. When multiple types of derivatives contracts expire on the same day, it is called double or triple witching. Such periods are characterized by high levels of activity and volatility as traders rush to roll out and close expiring contracts to maximize their profits.

Gems for Depression

Smoky Quartz: for grounding, removes negative and excess energy.
Kunzite: Beautiful light pink stone that is known for its powerful abilities to help one heal emotional disorders. Releases tension, restores peace, calming.
Lepidolite: Helps one remove negative thoughts, especially obsessive ones. Is also known to help stabilize mood swings, and balances excessive energies.
Tiger’s Eye: Grounds energy and brings a more positive outlook. Works with energy from both the sun and the earth. Highly protective, can help defend against unwanted, negative energies.
Sunstone: Dispels fears, phobias, and can create a more positive outlook. It is a stone of independence and strength.
Citrine: known for its positive attributes. Radiates positive energy.
Rose Quartz: A gentle healing stone that aids in self-love, compassion, and emotional issues.
Chrysoprase: promotes joy and happiness. Is known to ease anxiety issues.
Lapis Lazuli: Can help overcome abuse issues, trauma, depression, and grief. Aids in independence, inner power, and hope.
Lithium Quartz: Releases stress, helps restore emotional balance, can ease mood swings.
Jet: Purifies & protects, calms anxiety & fearful thinking. Promotes self-reliance, eases stress due to transitions/changes

Swamp Witch Black Water Hattie

Swamp Witch Black Water Hattie is a witch who lived in the swamps and bayous Florida. Although there are unknown tales and stories of Hattie the most well known legend is the song written by Jim Stafford. Hattie’s tales date back before Jim Stafford’s song but most of those stories haven’t been told or heard by anyone outside of Louisiana. However what is known is that the towns people who live near her don’t get along with Hattie. She lives in the swamps full alligators, snakes, leeches, lizards, fish, alligator turtles, frogs, toads, turtles, alligator gar, salamanders, reptiles, amphibians, spiders, owls and many other creatures that people don’t dare to go near.

Many of the people fear Hattie because of her powers, they fear what she could do and they also fear the stories of what other people have told them about her. Some people claim to have seen the horrible things that Hattie has done but it seems more likely that Hattie doesn’t cause trouble with the towns people and just prefers to be alone. Another reason people are afraid of Hattie is because of the animals that she keeps with her. But despite the fact of all the stories told about her and the fear that people have of her. Hattie helps the town when a plague comes to the town at first they blame Hattie for the plague. But the towns folk change their minds about her after she helps them and saves the town. The people want to thank Hattie but she doesn’t want any thanks all she wants is to be alone. Even though Hattie isn’t as evil as people believe she knows that people fear her and she uses this to scare people and keep them away.

Although people fear her there are some who are brave enough to go into the swamp to look for her. The few people who go looking for Hattie seek charms, spells, potions to cure sicknesses. Most never find her or make it those that do receive the cure that they are looking for. Although Hattie gives them what they need those people are to scared to go back into the swamp she also enjoys frightening them when they find her shack.

Bind a Black Box

Create a magickal barrier around you to banish all the negative, and bring some protection into your personal life.

A small black box
Black or dark purple tissue paper
A small personal token that fits in the box
Sea salt
Length of coarse twine
Shard of broken glass
The box should be black, but it’s better if you can paint it yourself though using one that is black to begin with is fine too. Small cardboard jewlery boxes work very well for this spell.

Sprinkle some salt in the bottom of the box, then fill it in with some tissue paper. You can use cloth if you don’t have tissue. It has to be black or dark though. Set your token in the center and say the words of the spell.

Inside this box,
I place my locks
To banish all my ill.

Protect my life,
Keep out strife,
By the power of my will.

Put the lid on the box, and set the piece of glass on the lid. Wrap the whole thing several times with twine, enough to hold the shard in place. Tie with a solid knot

What is the origin of the term Tree hugger?

“The first tree huggers were 294 men and 69 women belonging to the Bishnois branch of Hinduism, who, in 1730, died while trying to protect the trees in their village from being turned into the raw material for building a palace. They literally clung to the trees, while being slaughtered by the foresters. But their action led to a royal decree prohibiting the cutting of trees in any Bishnoi village. And now those villages are virtual wooded oases amidst an otherwise desert landscape.

Not only that, the Bishnois inspired the Chipko movement (chipko means “to cling” in Hindi) that started in the 1970s, when a group of peasant women in the Himalayan hills of northern India threw their arms around trees designated to be cut down. Within a few years, this tactic, also known as tree satyagraha, had spread across India, ultimately forcing reforms in forestry and a moratorium on tree felling in Himalayan regions.” Info shared by Ecologically Conscious.

Photo is of village women of the Chipko movement in the early 70’s in the Garhwal Hills of India, protecting the trees from being cut down.

“You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just don’t recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for Goddess sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves.

After you go so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm. 

Never forget that your magick

The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It’s not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel you’ve lost something but you’re not sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you “sir.” It just happens.

These memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who I’m going to be when my journey winds down. I need the memory of magic if I am ever going to conjure magic again. I need to know and remember, and I want to tell you.”

Never forget that your magick

Fame Spell’


You will need the following items for this spell:

1 Glass of water
1 mirror to have behind the glass
Image
yourself
your voice
Take the glass of water and place it infront of the mirror.
Look through the glass and see yourself in the mirror imagine you standing there when suddenly people come running towards you then say:

“The people oh so quick,
but I feel only like a stick,
one stuck on a branch way too big,
That branch is destiny and its about to change,
Iwish to be famous and become my own destiny.”

Spell to get Something.’


You will need the following items for this spell:

A charm related to the object you’re trying to get, or a candle/incense/oil burner.

Place incense/oil burner/candle on an alter if you have one if not ignore the pieces about incense/oil burners/candles. Then get your charm and place it next to the candle/oil burner/incense, light the candle/incense/oil burner and say:

”Ancient God and Goddess(or another God depending on who you worship) wise and old,
Bring me riches, bring me gold,
Please bring money for a _desired object_ to me,
This is my will, mote it be!”
meditate on holding the object you’re trying to get, this of the sounds and smells of the object.

This spell can be edited so you could probably get anything you want…but be careful, I wouldn’t cast this spell for too many things. 

Paid Bills’


You will need the following items for this spell:

Five pumpkinseeds
Three Cinnamon sticks
One dollar bill
Green cloth
Green candle
Cinnamon or basil oil
Green ribbon
On a Friday during the waxing moon, assemble all your ingredients at dusk. Take the candle and rub (Prosperity, basil or cinnamon) oil into it while focusing on your bills and debts being paid, see them being paid, picture your self writing checks and smiling all the way to the bank. Light the candle and take the green cloth, add the pumpkinseeds, Cinnamon sticks, and the dollar bill and fold three times, tie with ribbon. Chant while you work and focus on money coming towards you;

“Dollar bill, work your will.
Pumpkinseeds do your deeds.
Cinnamon sticks, do the trick,
Bring needed money & bring it quick”.

Repeat three times burn candle for nine minutes. Keep talisman near your wallet or purse, and bills to be paid. Expect money to come, know it will and it shall 

Charge Cards’


You will need the following items for this spell:

A pack of cards(casino,spanish etc)
A wand
Your own altar with a pentagram
Casino Cards:

Hearts means love
Swords means strength
Flowers means growth
Diamonds means money
Kings,Queens and Jacks means leaderness and richness
Jokers mean friends
Spanish Cards:

Gold means money
Cups means food
Swords means strength
Sticks means nature
Fools means jobs
Kings means leaderness

Examples:
Casino cards: if the queen of hearts is pick up that means love and leaderness, richness
Spanish cards: if the kings of sticks is pick up that means nature and leaderness

Spell Casting:
Put the pack of cards on the pentagram in the altar and point the pack of cards with your wand and say:

“Pack of cards, I need you to say my future and help me on my path of my life.

The Power of Blood

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that blood is a powerful thing. This is something that is so embedded in us that we all understand it. Fear and awe of blood goes way back to our earliest human ancestors. The sight of that bright red fluid — whether it was coming from an enemy or friend, your prey or yourself – got immediate attention. Blood is associated with such powerful concepts that some people can’t stand the sight of it, and might faint away if presented with too much. Hemophobia is the fear of blood.

Blood is associated with death: the slain warriors on the field, the victim of violence, the hunter’s prey all lay bloody in their final state. Blood is also associated with life: it’s part of the cycle of fertility that perpetuates life. If you lost too much blood, you would grow weak and die. If your blood is tainted, you will wither.

Blood is associated with pain: you see it when you stumble and fall, have an accident, or fight. Blood is also associated with passion: when you love doing something, when you are good at it, it’s ‘in your blood’. Someone you love, particularly family members, are your ‘blood’. Blood connects you to things, or others. Even if you don’t know someone, you can empathize with them, your ‘heart bleeds for them’. Blood is passion, it’s connection, it’s raw emotion.

Blood is life. It courses through your body delivering oxygen and nutrients to every part of you. Blood is energy—when you push yourself, your heart pounds and your pulse races as your blood flows even faster. A woman bleeds during her menstrual cycle, she bleeds when her hymen breaks, there’s blood at childbirth. If you donate blood you might be saving someone’s life.

Whatever little microscopic bits are floating around in there contain the very essence for all that you are. A scientists can (illegally) clone you if they had just a drop of your blood. Your blood contains your DNA—a blueprint not just for you, but your complete ancestral line.

Something that contains this much power is naturally powerful 

Magick Power

Energy—it is what makes up the universe. A witch calls this magic. Energy is the force of life. Energy empowers us to creation.

Indeed it is all about the Magic Powers or direction of energy in our lives. We empower ourselves by building energy through balance with nutrition and health, the kindness karma we create, and the morality in which we live.

As a witch we are a conduit of this energy directly from the Mother Earth—and we must align ourselves to her laws to survive and thrive. Mindfulness of the energy we manifest upon her is raised with more conscience our living.

It is our responsibility the energy we bring. Knowing this is a choice is central to the practice of magic—as we practice so that our choice is the highest possible in any given situation. Our “point” or “situation” is not important—but what we bring energetically is. Ultimately that is all that is really remembered in an interaction.

Keying into the Magic means we choose better, connect stronger, and listen deeper to our own voice and the promptings of our guides and ancestors. We feel the “magic” when we are most aligned with it. When we betray it—simply it dissipates & we feel “separate” from it. Realignment simply requires acknowledging the separation and returning to our center. Choose power!

Be Empowered
Be Beloved
Be Blessed

Power of 3 Healing Spell

This spells uses the strength of the number 3 to help speed healing of an illness. It’s best used when someone is ill, rather than injured. You can use this spell for yourself (if you are well enough to really focus on it) or for someone else.

3 candles (1 each of purple, blue and white)
Myrrh oil
Mint oil
Sandalwood oil
3 pieces of quartz
3 small pieces of paper.
Anoint each of the candles with all 3 oils, and set them up in an even triangle shape on your altar. Anoint the stones as well, and place one in front of each candle. Write the name of the ill person on each piece of paper, and place them in the center of the triangle.

Light each candle and focus on the person who is sick. Think about them being healthy and free of their symptoms. Picture them strongly in your mind as the candles burn. Repeat the following three times:

Magick mend and candle burn,
Illness leave and health return

Leave the candles to burn for 3 hours, then snuff them out. Your subject should soon start to improve, but you can add some extra power to your spell if you do the entire ritual for 3 nights in a row rather than just once 

THE WINTER CRONE


We enter the season of the Crone, the Hag of Winter. Beware, this is no gentle old lady – she is wild, fierce and elemental, just like winter itself. She is the storm rider, the shapeshifter, the ground freezer, the plant witherer, the bringer of death and the collector of souls. She has had many names in many places – Ceridwen, Hecate, Frau Gauden, Perchta, Nicneven, Reisarova, Frau Holda, Befana, the Hag of Beare, Babushka, Beira, Gyre-Carline, Mag Moullach, Gentle Annie, Lussi, and Saelde amongst numerous others.
In Scotland she is the Cailleach Bheur (‘The Blue Hag’), whose face is blue with cold, her hair as white as frost. With her holly staff in her hand and a carrion crow perched on her shoulder she strides across the land, beating down the vegetation, and hardening the earth with ice. [1] In her great cauldron, the whirlpool of Corryvreckan, she washes ‘the plaid of old Scotland’ until it is white with snow. [2] In she is Germany Frau Holda (or Frau Holle) who makes it snow when she shakes her feather pillows out. In Leicestershire, my home county, she is Black Annis, the blue-faced hag who haunts the Dane Hills, dealing death.
Winter is a time of death – the death of plants, the death of animals, and the death of those humans for whom the season is too harsh, so it is not surprising that the Hag of Winter is a death goddess and a collector of souls. In this role she often leads the Wild Hunt, flying through the midnight skies accompanied by wild women and ghosts, gathering the recently dead. In Norse myth these are the túnridur, the ‘hag riders’, or the gandreid ‘witch ride’. In Norway, the goddess Reisarova leads the aaskereida (‘lightning and thunder’), a spectral host who rode black horses with eyes like embers, while in Germany the Furious Host rode is led by Frau Holle, Percht or Berchta (‘Shining’). Slovenians call the goddess leading the hosts of the dead Zlata Baba or ‘Golden Crone’.
The Tyroleans said that whoever got in Wild Berchta’s way as she tore through the night with the Wild Hunt would sink into trance and upon awakening, be able to predict how the next harvest would be, and this leads us to something important about the Hag of Winter – there is a deep connection between fertility and winter death. Perchta fructified the land by ploughing it underground, while her heimchen (the souls of the dead babies she collected) watered the fields. While the Maiden begins it, the Mother bears it, and the Harvest Queen reaps it, the fertility of the next year’s harvest is fundamentally the Crone’s gift – the sleeping seeds in the underworld are in her care.
The fierce and powerful vision of the Crone Goddess found in myth is fundamentally at odds with the sanitised and patronising view of her I often come across – the Crone as the kindly wise old woman, waiting for death, who exists solely to patiently pass on her years of accumulated wisdom – a concept reflecting our own society, with its heritage of patriarchal monotheism, where old women are seen as useless, past sex, past childbearing, past working. That characterisation doesn’t fit any of the old ladies I know – most of whom are pretty formidable – and it certainly doesn’t fit the stories of the Hag who might be considered the most elementally powerful goddess of all.
In this dismal season, when the earth is bare and the trees skeletal, when everything showy is stripped away, we feel the underlying bones of creation and we see more clearly into its deepest secrets. We approach its elemental power, and this is the true knowledge of the Crone, the coron or ‘crowned one’, the Cailleach the veiled one, the hag, ‘the sacred one’

Removing Misfortune’

You will need the following items for this spell:

Three small jars
Nine cloves of garlic
Nine thorns from a white rose or nine pins
Pierce the garlic cloves with the pins or thorns saying forcefully while doing so: “Misfortune begone from me”. Put three of the cloves and pins in each jar. Bury each jar within sight of a church.

Say the Lords prayer each time you do this. Walk away and dont look back at what you have done.

This spell can give impressively fast results. As soon as you become aware of the misfortune you are suffering, look for a common theme i.e. are the problems financial, love etc and actually name them in the words you use. Because you have addressed it three times it cannot remain